Tamara Wittes to run Brookings Saban Center
The State Department’s Tamara Wittes will leave government and rejoin the Brookings Institution to become the new head of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, the think tank announced today. “The chance to lead the Saban Center was such a great opportunity I really couldn’t pass it up, and the chance to go back ...
The State Department's Tamara Wittes will leave government and rejoin the Brookings Institution to become the new head of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, the think tank announced today.
The State Department’s Tamara Wittes will leave government and rejoin the Brookings Institution to become the new head of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, the think tank announced today.
“The chance to lead the Saban Center was such a great opportunity I really couldn’t pass it up, and the chance to go back to my intellectual home in a leadership role was very exciting,” Wittes told The Cable in an interview Wednesday.
At the State Department, Wittes had two roles. She was deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, where she supervised Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), and deputy coordinator to William Taylor in State’s new Middle East Transitions office, which is meant to manage the U.S. reaction to the Arab uprisings.
Tom Vajda, director of the MEPI office, will serve as acting deputy assistant secretary until a full-time replacement for Wittes can be found. It’s unclear whether the deputy coordinator position under Taylor will be filled. Wittes’s last day at State was Jan. 31. She starts at Brookings March 1.
“I spent the last two year helping State build relationships across the region and Brookings also has great relationships, so this is going to be an opportunity to build on those in order to tackle the challenges the U.S. faces in a changing Middle East,” she said.
At the Saban Center, Wittes will replace Ken Pollack, who will return to a full-time research role as senior fellow. Wittes was previously a senior fellow in the Saban Center at Brookings from 2003 to 2009, where she directed the Middle East Democracy and Development Project.
“Tammy is an extraordinary scholar and returns to Brookings with a wealth of experience. Her most recent efforts to promote the political, economic, and social empowerment of citizens in the Arab World make her ideally suited to lead the Saban Center for Middle East Policy,” Brookings President Strobe Talbott said in a statement today.
Wittes’s return to Brookings will reunite her professionally with her husband, Brookings scholar Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow in the governance studies program who studies legal issues surrounding national security.
There’s an upside to working in the same building, Tamara Wittes said. “It certainly makes the commute easier.”
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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